


as the world halts into darkness

by Lire_Casander



Series: as the world whirls [3]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Blood, Character Study, Drug Abuse, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Beta Read, Spoilers, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-22 22:01:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23001076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: Darkness.He canʼt see anything. Heʼs surrounded by a black hole that threatens to eat him up hole, and he couldn’t care less. He must be in shock.At least he isn’t hurting.
Relationships: Carlos Reyes (9-1-1 Lone Star)/TK Strand, Carlos Reyes/TK Strand
Series: as the world whirls [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644655
Comments: 14
Kudos: 147





	as the world halts into darkness

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings. This has several references to **mentions of gunshots, mentions of blood, mentions of drug use, mentions of drug abuse, suicide ideation, heavy angst**. It also contains spoilers for _9-1-1 Lone Star_ S01E08. Read at your own discretion.

Darkness. 

He canʼt see anything. Heʼs surrounded by a black hole that threatens to eat him up hole, and he couldn’t care less. He must be in shock. 

At least he isn’t hurting. 

He vividly remembers the gun being shot. He was there, at the receiving end of something that was never intended for a firefighter. Heʼs heard stories — heʼs lived in New York his whole life. Heʼs grown up with the shadows of all those who perished when the towers fell, all first responders whose knee-jerk reaction had been to run _into_ the buildings, not out of them. Heʼs never, ever experienced it first hand. 

Sure, heʼs saved some lives. Sure, heʼs lost some. Heʼs even almost lost himself in the process of understanding who he really is. But now there’s nothing. There’s a void where everything used to be — where his whole world used to twirl in ribbons of neon colored stripes that tended to trap him, there’s simply a blackness covering everything. 

The pain comes back with a vengeance, and all he can do is double over himself, coughing up into his uniform — or maybe it is his fatherʼs, he isn’t sure anymore — until there’s a red wetness covering everything in sight. 

He can hear distant voices freaking out as he drifts away, a throbbing in his chest that wonʼt leave him, spreading hotness throughout a body he doesn’t feel as his any longer. He wants to speak up, to tell his father to give up, to let him go, but there are no words coming out of his mouth, his throat closing up. 

He canʼt even remember his name. 

He struggles to stay awake in the darkness that engulfs him. His eyes feel heavy, his heart is too tired to keep beating at a normal pace. He just wants to rest. He just wants to sleep. He just wants everything to stop hurting. 

He just wants this hell to end. 

He wants for this nightmare to be the finish line of all his demons, the reason why he lets go. Not an overdose, not by his own hand — an external reason, Godʼs will, an accident. He doesn’t want the kid to have to live with the knowledge that heʼs killed someone, because that child isnʼt a murderer. The truth is, heʼs been wanting to die for a long while, and this is the perfect excuse to blame it on something else, something that isn’t directly linked to his inability to _desire_ to keep breathing. 

He’s slipping away. He wants to give in, to jump face first into the darkness, but hands grab at him and donʼt let go, and heʼs too weak to fight. He’s always been a coward. 

He loses track of time. He doesn’t know where he is or how he got here or what time it is. He feels a soft mattress underneath his body, and an unwelcome presence crawling up his nose. He must be at a hospital.

Why is he at a hospital? 

His memory is fuzzy. Nothing seems clear in his mind. He feels dizzy and somewhat high, and he realizes with rising fear that he must be on something for the pain. There’s a corner of his mind that doesn’t feel _real_ , as though he isn’t himself, as though heʼs watching from the outside through a window to his own life, spiraling fast in front of his eyes. When he tries to move, he finds himself restrained by invisible ropes. He doesn’t understand anything. 

But then again, nothing ever made sense while he got high on oxy and dark thoughts.

Wherever he is, there’s a hurricane devastating everything he once thought he knew. 

There are images floating around his mind, images that he canʼt shake off but he doesn’t want to welcome into his psyche. The last time he allowed his memories to take over him, bad things happened. Nuclear bad things — a break-up, an overdose, a battering ram into his door, a freak-out, a bar brawl. He wonʼt go back there. He wonʼt. He _canʼt_. 

Alex saw right through him, through his insecurities and his flaws, and chose to pour salt on the open wound that his heart had been. Alex had ripped him out and left him to rot in the open. Alex had stomped all over his soul, forgetting about the bleeding shreds that flared up in his wake. 

Alex hadnʼt been his first awakening to an unforgiving world, but he had been the hardest fall heʼs ever taken. 

His side hurts. It shouldn’t be in pain. _He_ shouldn’t be in pain. Where is he? Why isn’t whatever he is on working? 

He’s been sober for over a hundred days, and now he isn’t, not any longer. What has he done? Why is he so weak that he hasnʼt been able to stop whoeverʼs watching over him from sedating him? 

The dizziness settles down, and his whole world tilts on its axis as he tries to get a grip of what he knows before it dissolves into thin air. He watches the memories of Alex vanishing; he tries to reach out but they fall through his fingers like the sand used to when he played on the beach as a careless kid. He watches on as some other images — pictures of happier times, stamps of better days, sunny and rainy and windy and cold and hot and _perfect_ — quickly get lost in the whirlwind of emotions getting sucked into the black hole his soul is becoming. 

He’s unable to stop the maelstrom from taking away everything he loves. 

Buttercup has only been in his life for a few days. Not long enough for him to fall in love with the dog thatʼs about to rip his heart in two, and yet he feels he canʼt lose the very scarce images heʼs stored of them together — a chewed slipper, a night spent in the same bunk bonding over the fatality of life being much more feeble than either of them anticipated. He can’t lose those memories. He can’t lose the only sense of finality that doesn’t feel like the final line — there might be hope for Buttercup, there might be hope for his father. There might be hope for himself. 

He canʼt lose it. He can’t. He _wonʼt_. 

Buttercup gets sucked into the black hole and all he wants to do is cry out. 

No sound echoes out of his parched throat. 

Owen Strand is a man of many words, he knows that. But there’s always a hidden meaning in everything he says. He loves talking in riddles, implying much more than what his words reveal. He knows how to read between the lines when his father says _it’s okay to love him even though you might lose him_. He knows the meaning behind every sound — he knows they mean a dog with cancer fighting his way out of the darkness, he knows they mean a father gearing up to win an impossible battle against the fate of those who rushed toward the danger when everyone else stepped back. 

He knows they mean a love that wasnʼt meant to be found, but that crept its way up, up, up, until all that was left in his crushed heart was the prospect of a new beginning, the hope of a growing future, and the fear of failing again. 

Carlos Reyes hadnʼt been what heʼd expected when he followed his father down to Texas. Carlos Reyes hadnʼt been anything heʼd planned for. Carlos Reyes is just a force of nature, a tornado that sweeps up everything as he barrels on. Carlos Reyes is everything heʼs sworn off, a reason to live, someone who isn’t giving up on the failure that his life has become. Along with his father, Carlos is the one whoʼs shown him that faith is blind, that love thrives under duress, that life is worth living on his own terms. 

Carlos Reyes is the person he canʼt watch drowning in the storm circling over him.

He wants to stand up, he wants to fight. His memories of Carlos are slowly fading away, swallowed by the fuzziness of whateverʼs compromising his sobriety. He can’t allow it. He can’t lose Carlos. He can’t. 

He wonʼt. 

It takes every ounce of strength left in him, and then some, all the jumbled feelings heʼs been storing, filing them away for a better moment, until that moment escaped him in a gunshot that was never meant to be. He remembers now. He remembers the kid. He remembers the light. He remembers the pain and the fear and the cries and the rushing. 

He remembers his name. 

He doesn’t want to die anymore. Maybe he almost allowed his fears to take over, to steal the best of him. Maybe heʼs got a long path of recovering ahead of him. But he isn’t going to let fear win over him. 

_Itʼs okay to love him_.

 _Itʼs okay_. 

He remembers his name, now. He remembers everything — every small detail, the childhood days spent in Cape Cod, the academy months wasted between books and alcohol, the slow shifts at the station sandwiched between Marjan and Mateo. He remembers the bad days when everything was so dark, so wrong, that nothing seemed to be _right_ anymore. 

He remembers his parents. Alex. He remembers Carlos and his everlasting unbreakable faith in a future that heʼs systematically tramped down with his own insecurities. Not any longer. 

He remembers. 

He gasps, fighting for air. He breathes in through a tube and panics when he canʼt feel anything. He freaks out when the voices around him start to rise. But he fights the panic. He fights the fire threatening to consume him. 

He’s a firefighter, after all. 

He feels fingers in his temple, soft words urging him to open his eyes and wake up. To come back. To want to stay with them, with his father and his newfound family and Buttercup and Carlos. 

Always Carlos, pushing him to fight his demons and win, to choose to be instead of to just exist, to live instead of to just survive. 

To love. 

He remembers, now. 

He opens his eyes and allows the light to full his pupils. He wants to smile but he knows it comes out more like a grimace than something else. He hears and feels and hurts. He’s going to get through this. He’s got purpose. He’s got love. 

There’s brightness around him. 


End file.
